The Under the Hood
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Dear Motor Medics, With winter on its way out, I’m wondering about things I can do to help with all the salt that I am picturing eating my car alive while I am sleeping.
My car is three years old and in very nice shape with no signs of any rust yet and I want to keep it that way. I washed it as often as I could when there was salt on the roads, but I want to know more about other ways to protect it such as undercoating.
Is undercoating still a thing?
Thank you, Jeff, in Lake Park, Iowa
Dear Jeff, Summer is the time to think about and apply things to protect a car during the winter. With a wet and dirty car, the time needed to prepare a car is much longer, but it can be done at increased cost.
Washing often is a good thing but if you wash a car that is frozen in very cold weather, it can make the issue worse by adding water to the salt which then freezes in all the cracks speeding up the corrosion.
Products that are oil based like ones from NHOU or another called Wool Wax repel moisture and drive it out from the cracks and keep salt away. There are also products like Salt Brine Eliminator which when applied help shed salt. These products are best left as professionally applied and need to be reapplied every few years or so.
Take care, The Motor Medics
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